


Strangers

by miraline_tpp



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Oneshot, Post-Episode: s02e18 Juno Steel and the Time Gone By, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Trauma, be gay do crime, crime lesbians, juniverse, kind of fluff?, mostly angst, post time gone by, vespa has trust issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:01:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22658974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miraline_tpp/pseuds/miraline_tpp
Summary: Vespa wants to trust Buddy, but they are different women from fifteen years ago, and she can't forget who still technically owns her contract.
Relationships: Buddy Aurinko/Vespa
Comments: 9
Kudos: 25





	Strangers

Vespa wants to trust Buddy. She really does. The two of them shared years between them, years of takeout containers on their ship’s floor and silly arguments over hogging the blankets and stealing flowers for Buddy (Buddy always knew Vespa preferred practical gifts, like new knives). But the time between then and now stretches like a chasm. Vespa has changed. She’s had to learn to look over her shoulder, to question every seeming gesture of kindness. Buddy was never dishonest before. But she has to have changed, too. And the Vespa that lives now does not know how to sleep soundly next to the woman who is now a stranger.  
So she sits on the roof of the lighthouse, absently rubbing the plastic surface of her debtor’s tag. The cheerful yellow is dimmed in the starlight, and she can at least pretend its brightness hasn’t mocked her every day for the last five years. She does not pretend it isn’t there. She can feel it. If she focuses, she can almost feel its medicine pumping through her veins, mixed with her poisoned blood. Can her body really sense the wrongness of it, or is it just another paranoia?  
Her heart speeds up, and her hands start to shake. Dammit, Vespa. She takes deep breaths and tries to focus on the lights of the Cerberus Province. Home, once, or as close to it as she’d ever known. Now it feels like a trap. She isn’t a slave anymore, she knows that, but the tag is always on her wrist. It always will be. And she can’t shake the fear that when it comes down to it, the woman who now owns her contract will be no better than the organization she took it from.   
This city is hard to relax in. She tries to place the lights, but any happy memories are overshadowed by the trauma of the last five years (Buddy calls it trauma. Vespa can’t quite wrap her mind around the word). The shop that made the worst tea Vespa had ever tasted, the shop she and Buddy had left stifling laughter, was now the shop where she had first met a person with a tag, a person who had gone on about how the Board of Fresh Starts saved them. She had suspected then that they were a poster child for the company, and she was right, but what other option had she had?   
So instead of the city, she looks up at the stars. It’s been a long time since she’s had the luxury of picking out constellations, but she thinks she remembers a few. There’s Saturn, she thinks, where Vespa completed her first real theft, the first that wasn’t just food or medicine for her sister. It was a bracelet off the wrist of a man who had probably considered it expensive. At eleven, Vespa had, too. It was worth just enough to keep the hunger at bay for a few days, keep her sister from coughing.   
Vespa jumps to her feet as she hears the door open behind her, drawing two knives in an instant. It’s Buddy, still rumpled from bed. Her red hair is pulled back, not hiding the scars on her face.  
“Are you all right, darling?”  
“Couldn’t sleep,” Vespa responds. She puts away her knives, though every instinct in her screams not to.  
It was easy the first few days. Vespa had been so relieved at the mere idea of freedom, and the idea of seeing Buddy again, that she was able to push aside her nagging worries. But after the adrenaline had worn off, fear had settled back into Vespa like the cough Tamsin had never been able to outrun. Buddy could not remove the debtor’s tag, not without killing her. She had promised to give Vespa her contract, but the police on Baldor had declared her dead. Her accounts should have been safe; none of them were through legal channels.   
But word got around, and in the years she’d disappeared during, everything that she hadn’t had on her had disappeared, too. Neither of them had the funds to put her on any sort of record again, not yet, so there was no way for Buddy to transfer the contract to Vespa. But it was her comms that had the code to deactivate it, if she chose. And in the week since the relief wore off, Vespa has not been able to shake the lingering suspicion that this new woman would drop the charming exterior, break her promises, and become another monster.  
Vespa almost snorts. Monster. Like this is some kind of horror stream movie. There’s no turning the screen off, the lights on. Not if she wants to survive. Vespa has never had any other option. Tears burn at her eyes, but she will. not. cry.   
Buddy reaches for her hand, and Vespa flinches. Something shifts in Buddy’s remaining eye. Something like hurt.   
“Something’s bothering you, isn’t it?”  
Vespa takes a deep breath, then another, trying to calm the storm in her chest. The air won’t satisfy her lungs, and her breaths become bigger, more ragged. Dammit, dammit, dammit. “You’re damn right, something’s bothering me,” she finally bursts out. “I don’t care what we used to have. I don’t know you anymore. And you own me.”  
Buddy bows her head for a moment. “I understand. I wish I could just reopen your accounts and return your contract to you. It’s terrible that I haven’t been able to yet, but I swear, my Vespa, I am trying.”  
“How do I know that?”  
Another pause. “I’m afraid that for the time being, all I can give you is my word. But I have not broken it before, and I will not break it now.”   
Vespa wants to believe her. Buddy has always been honest with her. If it was fifteen years ago, maybe she could. A new woman stands before her. But the shape of her is achingly familiar. “I-- I want to trust you.” It’s a risk, to be so straightforward.  
“I know, darling. I know. I’m sorry things turned out this way. You know that if I could…” She trails off. Vespa knows she isn’t just talking about her accounts. There are so many hurts, so many violences and accidents. Their history, like their skin, has become wrinkled, raw in places, littered with scars. At no point in the last ten days have either of them tried to pretend it isn’t. The first night on the lighthouse, Buddy had admitted they were different people. Vespa reminds herself of that.   
“I know there’s no way to take it off. I know that. But I can’t stop thinking about it. I can’t stop thinking about how, if you wanted to, you could...” She doesn’t finish the sentence. They both know how it’s meant to end. All is quiet for a moment, except for their breathing.   
“Would you like my comms?” Buddy finally asks.  
“What?”  
“Until we get all this sorted out, would you like my comms? That device is the only access to your code. Would you feel better with it in your hands?”  
Vespa is struck silent for a moment. “Don’t you need it?”  
“It certainly makes my life easier, but if it makes you feel safe, it’s worth any inconvenience.”  
That suspicion creeps in again. “You would still know the code, though.”  
“You could change it. The Board of Fresh Starts built in plenty of security measures. If this would help you feel safer, Vespa, I’m happy to do it.”  
She considers, looking for the trap. She can’t find it. Her code has been transferred to Buddy’s comms, and she’s never met anyone who could hack that secure a system. Legally, she-- her contract, at least-- would belong to Buddy. But on every practical level, Vespa would be in control of herself. That hasn’t been true in years. It’s so simple. “Seems like a good fix, Buddy. How come you haven’t asked me before?”  
“Simple. I hadn’t thought of it before.”  
She thinks Buddy is telling the truth. She hopes Buddy is telling the truth. But if she isn’t…  
If she isn’t, and Vespa takes her comms, she won’t be in any more danger than she is now. It can’t hurt.   
Vespa nods. “I-- thanks, Buddy.”  
“You’re quite welcome, dear. Would you like to come downstairs with me to get it?”  
She offers a hand. Vespa looks at it, remembers all the times she has clung to it. She takes it. Buddy is warm, solid, as she leads her down the spiraling stairs.  
They are different women than they were. Vespa does not know this new Buddy yet, cannot be certain of who she is. But she is willing to find out.

**Author's Note:**

> Uhhh this is actually my first fanfic that I've finished and/or posted but I need more Vespa content! Come yell with me on tumblr @miraline-tpp


End file.
